Just a quick update to inform those who follow me due to my work on Fedora. A version of my masters thesis will be presented in Brazil (via video) on July 5th at the International Free Software Workshop.

You can find more information here: http://softwarelivre.org/wsl
I’m in Session 4.

You can find my full paper as submitted here: http://tux.gseis.ucla.edu/WSL2013_papers/Harrelson-fedora03.pdf

Well, this year has been a busy year! I completed my qualification exams (you can read all about that here) in April after preparing for them all semester and since then I have been preparing to move to Hawaii!

I officially cleared out of El Paso Friday and will be hanging out in Dallas for a couple of weeks before I head off to Oahu. I am looking forward to going from the desert to a tropical island. It should be quite a culture shock, one of the things I love as an anthropologist.

All of this is going on as I start work on my dissertation research, which I will talk more about in a future post (let’s just say it has to do with gaming). On that note, my hope is to be able to keep this blog a bit more current once I get settled on the island. I’ll probably post a bit about that process over on Tumblr if you’re interested.

On top of quals and moving, I’m also finally taking the time to work on my web portfolio. I’ll post about that as soon as there is something worth showing there. I’m hoping to pick up some UX/IXD/IA side work as a result. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you a private preview.

So yeah, it’s been a busy year and now you know why this blog has been neglected!

It has been one roller coaster of a week involving many outside distractions and though I have been up about 24 hours now (which included a 10 hour road trip with infants from west Texas to north Texas to visit family for the holiday), the feeling of elation is so great right at this moment that I’m not even sure I could sleep if I tried.

I may not get much opportunity anyway as I’m sure my infant twins will be up in a couple of hours.

Who needs sleep anyway?

I’m sure the ensuing dread of waiting to hear the results will likely keep me up many nights during the next two to three weeks. Oh, and of course working on the oral exam portion as well. Yeah…

Eyes burning, red, and twitching. I of course ended up going off in a totally new and previously unresearched by me direction for one of my qual exam questions which, while it has been exciting to do, has me also doing brand new research to write a paper that is due at 10am the day after tomorrow. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. Why else would I be going for my PhD? *twitch*